


world on fire

by wreckageofstars



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (very very very obliquely about the doctor and the master), Angst, Dreams, Family, Gen, Post-Episode: s12e01-02 Spyfall, Team TARDIS Continues To Try, Telepathy, hmmm we went weird here folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:33:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22534786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreckageofstars/pseuds/wreckageofstars
Summary: They try to put the pieces of her together, and draw their own conclusions. In the meantime, she dreams.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Graham O'Brien, Thirteenth Doctor & Ryan Sinclair, Thirteenth Doctor & The Master (Dhawan), Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan
Comments: 30
Kudos: 194





	world on fire

Above her, everything burns. A marmalade sky gone black. She chases after him through fields of red grass, over rivers that gleam with the fire-light, beneath silver trees that fall to the ground as ash. Her feet leave char marks behind her. She chases him but he won’t turn around.

 _Stop_ , she pleads, and the shape of the word is familiar in her mouth. _Wait. Please, please—_

Around and around. Over and over. The grass turns to sand beneath her shoes, sticks in the crevices of her toes, shifts as she runs. Still, everything burns above her. In the distance, there’s a barn aflame, and for some reason it brings her to her knees.

 _Stop_ , she begs and begs. _Please, stop_.

The desert turns green and gloomy, impossible, unknowable strands towering into the air like trees. He turns, a small silhouette, alien light catching in the gleam of his eyes. Just a boy.

So is she.

 _Got you_ , he breathes, tiny chest heaving. _Finally_.

In the quiet dark, Yaz wakes with a gasp.

—

The problem is, there’s nothing wrong.

For the first five days, the first five planets, sure, she’s terribly quiet. Enough for them to notice, enough for them to comment. Enough for Yaz to wonder, briefly, when they finally corner her in the console room, if this is the right moment after all. There’s something in her eyes, when they ask. Something thin and flat and sad and scary—but the next time she looks for it, it’s gone. Before Yaz can blink, they’re flying on to the next adventure, full-speed ahead, and she’s always just ahead of them, always smiling, always running at a tilt. Balance restored. She throws on her coat and makes them questionable iced tea and takes them to see a thousand sparkling things in the sun and she talks and talks and talks.

There’s nothing wrong. Except there is. The Doctor talks all the time and she never stops, except when they’re not looking. The Doctor talks all the time and there’s a fading bruise around her neck. The Doctor talks all the time and there’s barely a space between one adventure and the next. No room to breathe. No room to rest. The Doctor talks and talks and talks—but she never really says much. She throws weightless facts and names and anecdotes at their feet like an offering, an appeasement, a sacrifice: _take this and leave it_.

They’re friends. All of them. So Yaz leaves it.

For now.

—

Yaz knows why she doesn’t want to talk, is the thing.

She understands it better than the boys, even, she thinks privately, though she never says so out loud. The three of them have been talking, it’s true. When her back is turned, when she’s far away, when she’s busy tinkering, which is almost always, these days, when they’re not out exploring. It don’t feel exactly right, but—

Well. There had been a terrible amount of explaining to do, and, in the end, very little explanation. And there’s nothing wrong, but at night the TARDIS sings blue and dims at the edges. There’s nothing wrong, but she snaps at them when they get too close. There’s nothing _wrong_ , but when her back is to them, she goes very, very still. The police officer in Yaz can’t help but analyse it all like she might a suspect, a victim, churning the enigma of her through a two-day family liaison seminar. It falls short, of course it does, because the Doctor is—the _Doctor_. Alien and unknowable and always hiding behind that wonderful smile like she’ll fall apart without it. But Yaz understands. She ticks the little boxes in her mind. _Withdrawn, restless, short-tempered. Loss of sleep, loss of appetite._ All smothered under a thin veneer of cheerful normality. It all points to trauma, and in this case it’s a trauma that Yaz understands far too well, if only because she can’t seem to stop dreaming about it.

“You never said,” she starts, once, because sometimes the only thing to do when you’re approaching a difficult topic is to dive right in—firmly, kindly. Like she’s been trained. The Doctor is moving around the console, hair covering her face, a wrench in one hand, the sonic held in her mouth for emergencies. At the sound of Yaz’s voice, she pauses.

“Never said what?” she asks around the sonic, muffled, hilarious. Her hands shift again, always searching, always grasping for something to do. She twists a knob, for unclear reasons. Pulls a wire, maybe just so she can repair it.

“How long you were there,” Yaz says, diving in. “In that—place. That other realm.”

The Doctor’s hands stop. She spits the sonic out into her free hand and sets down the wrench, a curtain of hair still concealing her face.

“Not long,” she replies. “Not long at all. I met Ada Lovelace there, didn’t I tell you? Ada was brilliant.”

Yaz’s lips twitch. “I know Ada Lovelace was brilliant, you’ve told us twenty times.”

The curtain of hair moves, and she catches a flash of an indignantly scrunched nose.

“Well, she was!”

“I know!” Yaz counters, half-laughing. She sobers, still smiling fondly. “But that’s not what I’m askin’.”

The Doctor stops what she’s doing. She moves away from the wrench, tucks her hair behind her ears, and when she turns to look at Yaz, she peers at her carefully like she hasn’t in days. _Seeing_ her, properly. There’s a flash of something she doesn’t understand, and then her face softens with something that might be guilt.

“What are you asking, then?”

The air on the TARDIS is always rich and cool and almost sweet, but sometimes—like now—it whistles down Yaz’s throat in a rasp. Talking to Ryan about it had been—not easy, exactly, but not hard. This feels like an admittance, like a weakness.

“I thought I was in Jahannum,” she breathes, finally.

“Oh, Yaz. You weren’t in hell,” the Doctor says softly, moving closer. There’s guilt, cornered behind her eyes, and that hadn’t been the point of this, hadn’t been the object. “I promise.”

“No, I know,” Yaz says, swallowing. Her heart is pounding up her throat, a fast humming-bird beat, and she’d thought it would be easier than this, thought it would be quieter. “I know, now. I knew then, really. I just—I couldn’t figure out what I’d done, and I was—”

She’s not doing this quite right, it’s not playing out quite like she’d imagined. She’d meant to comfort and instead she’s being comforted.

“I was afraid,” she whispers finally. “And it’s—if you were too, it’s okay. That’s all.”

The Doctor smiles at her, comforting, a little sad. Reassuring, in that way of hers. “Of course I was afraid,” she says gently, and all the air whistles out of Yaz’s lungs. It’s not even an admittance, the way she says it. It’s just perfect fact, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide. “But fear can make you stronger, faster.” She swallows. “Kinder.”

“Can it?” Yaz wonders, sometimes.

But the Doctor’s voice is firm and kind. “Yes,” she says. “I’m afraid all the time. I do some of my best work when I’m scared out of my wits.” She smiles again. “I think you do, too.”

Yaz shakes her head. “Maybe,” she says, reassured, uneasy with it. “Sorry. I meant—I meant to—”

Embarrassingly, a yawn overtakes her before she can finish the thought.

The Doctor frowns. The shadows overtake her face and settle in the thin lines of her mouth.

“Are you tired, Yaz?” she asks, too lightly.

Yaz shakes her head again, heat seeping up towards her cheeks. “Just rough dreams, that’s all. And I’m sorry,” she tries again, glancing up. “I meant to help you,” she mumbles. “But I think you’ve helped me instead.”

The Doctor stares at her for a moment, oddly still. Then she breaks into a smile again, gentle.

“Don’t be so sure,” she says.

—

Red grass, again. Scorched earth, marmalade sky. A house in the distance, and a barn, and mountains that reach to the burning sky, and they’re running together, falling together, in the shadow of distant glass.

 _Wait for me_ , he begs, but she leaves him behind. In her absence, his figure grows like a shadow, like a cancer, overtakes her and the barn and the mountains and the house, charred feet leaving scars in the ground. The scene shifts, whips away like sand. Straw underfoot, and it smells like home and it smells like fear and she’s backing away from a big red button but his hands are reaching, reaching, reaching, soft over her own and she can’t pull away.

 _Wait for me_ , he says, laughing, and he brings their fingers together, lets their hands fall as one, they press the button together—

Ryan wakes with astart. His face is damp with tears.

—

There’s nothing wrong, really.

That’s the problem he keeps running into. They’d cornered her, that day, and she’d answered their questions. Well, some of their questions. Enough of their questions, maybe. She’d answered their questions like none of it meant nothing, like all of it were as simple as the answers to a pub quiz, and about as important. No warmth, no heaviness. He hadn’t got it then, and he’s not sure he gets it now. Maybe, he muddles through one afternoon, when they’re all legs dangling in the library pool, relaxing, it’s just that it’s not that important to her. Graham’s from Essex, like, and it’s not like he goes around shouting it to everyone he meets. Well, for one, it’s a bit obvious. For two, well, maybe Graham would go shouting it round if he thought he could do it without embarrassing himself. But maybe it’s different, in space.

And besides, he thinks after, remembering O and the fear in her eyes and the shock and the anger. Not everyone’s always proud of where they come from. And maybe that’s it, maybe _that’s_ why she’s being so weird. Because she is—being weird, that is. Too quiet when she thinks they’re not looking, too still. Distracted, like. 

The O thing, Ryan gets. He does, really. Well, maybe not _really_ , really, but he’s had friendships turn sour before. Mates who you thought were your mates end up being somewhat less. People you thought you could rely on let you down.

He gets it. Better than the rest of them, anyway. And if she don’t want to talk about it, well, he’s not gonna be the one to push. Besides, there’s loads better ways to show people you care, to make sure they know it. If she’s worried, if she’s certain the three of them are no better than the friends she’s made before, well, they’ll just have to prove her wrong. So he drinks her iced tea and runs when she says to and smiles when she glances back, a gleam of desperation in her eyes. When she drifts, in those rare, rare moments when everything turns too still, he’s quick to snag the sleeve of her coat, ask a question, trip on his own two feet.

She’s his best friend, and she’s hurt. All he can do is be there, same as his nan and his mum always taught him. So he tries, at least. He follows her when she wanders, when she jumps below the console for repairs, just—there. And she talks too much about absolutely nothing, and he listens to her ramble, and—admittedly—sometimes nods off against the wall, because she never really stops, is the thing. If they’re not exploring or adventuring, she’s keeping busy some other way. Repairing this, cleaning that. She rewires the whole system one day, dredges the boating lakes for a lost cricket ball the next. She tries to bake a soufflé, and spends the rest of the day searching for the TARDIS’ elusive skating rink. The Doctor’s always been one for moving, but lately she keeps herself so busy it makes his head spin.

Mostly, though, she just—tinkers. Sometimes he’s half sure she spends just as much time breaking things as she does fixing them, doing _something_ at the console, and she says it’s repairs, but it never really looks like it.

“What are you doing?” he asks, because it’s what he asks every day. Sometimes she answers, sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she hears him, sometimes she doesn’t. He sticks around anyway.

“Maintenance,” she says, today, and he knows she’s lying, but he leaves it, for now.

“Oh,” he says, and something in the back of her eyes goes very still. _Ah_ , he thinks. He won’t push. But—

“You know,” he ventures. “It’s alright he was your mate. You didn’t know he was pretending.”

She stills, at the controls. Hair hiding her face.

“I know,” she says. Quiet. “Thanks, Ryan.”

“I’ve had rubbish friends, too,” he continues, and he could shift around the console, try to get a peek at her face under all that hair, but something compels him to wait. Just for a moment. Let her do it herself. “People I thought I could rely on. But we’re not like that, right? Doctor,” he says, firm. “We’re your friends. You don’t have to worry.”

“I know.” Soft, again. But he waits, swallowing back a yawn, and eventually she tucks that hair behind her ears, glances up at him. Smiling. It’s a little brittle, a little pinched, but he’ll take it.

Her gaze lingers on him, and in the odd dimness it grows a little cold, a little distant. The smile dims.

“You look tired,” she says, which is ironic, he thinks, and a bit hypocritical.“Are you?” Her pinched face pinches more. “Are we doin’ too much? I could slow us down,” she offers, even as her face somehow pinches even further at the thought. “Drop you home.”

“No, no,” he reassures, hand scrabbling for the back of his neck. He scratches it awkwardly. “It’s fine. Just—bad dreams, innit. Happens sometimes.”

Her breath just barely catches. Worry draws a line between her brows, but the rest of her face is carefully neutral, all of a sudden. “About what?” she asks, clearly trying for mild. It comes across a bit intense, anyway.

He shrugs. “I dunno.” But her expression is so weird that he thinks back, trying, in the vain hope that some sort of answer will appease her. Scrub the weirdness away. “It’s a bit different every time, but—red grass. I was runnin’ with someone. And then I was—”

He swallows. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, really. He’d woken up again with tears streaming down his face, like a kid.

“I was so sad,” he says.

He can’t figure out her face. Her expression never matches her eyes, lately. She clamps her lips together back into a smile and places an awkward— _awkward_ , she never touches them, hardly ever—hand on his shoulder and moves to leave.

“Let me know,” she says down at him. Worried like a mother might be, only that’s not right at all, is it. There’s an edge to her. Something thin and sharp. “If they don’t go away.”

“Right,” he answers. “Right, yeah, sure.”

She’s already left.

—

There’s something wrong.

The others are young and kind and they take her diversions and her cramped little smiles and her terrible iced tea without question, leave the rest simmering, bubbling away. They’re fine to take it slow. They have their own ideas what’s bothering her—and they might be right. He sips his tea with them while they talk, while they plan, while they try. In the meanwhile, he watches.

He watches, and he worries, as they skid frantically from one adventure to the next. They might be right, but he’s not so sure. Whatever’s eating at the Doctor, he doesn’t think it’s quite so simple as a friend gone bad, a forest gone wrong. Then again, he’s old and tired. What does he know?

It’s only—

Well, he’s getting the sense that maybe the Doctor is quite a bit older than she looks, too. Not that it’s an easy thing to prove, not that she’s at all amenable to answering their questions, these days, she dodges them like tennis balls aimed at her head, snaps at them when she can’t duck in time. More and more, lately. Like a string fraying away, patience wearing thin with the rest of her.

He goes looking for answers on his own instead, O’s files that he’d never got to look at itching at the back of his head. There’s not much time, these days, and he’s so tired, lately. They go flying from one disaster to the next, flinging themselves into adventure on the Doctor’s heels, uneasy sleep crammed in between, but the odd moment, the odd planet—

On Dorium’s moon, while the rest of them sort through a frankly excessive evacuation procedure and try to keep the base from exploding, he feigns investigation and combs through the moon’s media database, on half a hunch, half an instinct. The familiar way she’d prowled down the base’s corridors. The cageyness with which she’d evaded their usual questions. ‘Doctor’ produces 1,623 results. He narrows it down. ‘Disaster’, ‘problem’, ‘discovery’. 298 results. He’s not as fast at all of it as Ryan, as Yaz, his eyes squint and narrow at the blue glare of the screen, but he can scroll with the best of them and eventually— _ah_ , he thinks. A handful of news reports. A tragedy beneath them, deep in the moon’s mines, fifty years previously. He skims the details, because they’re not important, following the trail deeper and deeper until his eyes catch on a blurry photograph captured in the aftermath. A tall man with spiky hair and a long, flowing coat. ‘Mysterious stranger aids in recovery efforts’, the caption reads. A few articles later, the same photograph, now captioned ‘unnamed physician wanted for questioning, debrief, in relation to recent events; 1200 doré reward.’

 _Long gone_ , he thinks, scrutinizing the photograph, that lean, sharp face. So unfamiliar it should be impossible, but for the strangeness of those eyes. And that long, flappy coat—a dead giveaway, in the end.

He wonders how many of her there have been. How many Doctors, hiding behind those dark, unreadable eyes? It’s pointless to wonder too far, he supposes. Pointless to ask, too. But he can’t help but think that if he just looks far enough, looks hard enough, that maybe whatever’s bothering her will snap into place. That he’ll find a way to help her in the contours of another man’s face. Before she unravels entirely.

—

He keeps looking. Another planet, another database. _Gallifrey_ , he searches, finding nothing but whispers. _Time Lords_ , he tries, and gets nothing but warnings. _Doctor_ always gets him somewhere, though not always somewhere very helpful. He keeps trying. Sneaks away again and again, finds more Doctors, more stories. More grainy pictures of outrageously-dressed men, each one more different than the last. There’s one—

Leather jacket. Big ears. A grin stretched wide across an empty-eyed face.

Somehow, it’s the most familiar out of all of them.

—

Red grass, caught wet in the soles of their shoes, tangling with hay and straw and sand. Feet tangled together for safety beneath a thin blanket, pressed together for warmth on a cot built for one, four heart-beats in the dark. There’s something under the bed and the night is wide and endless, but there’s the two of them, always, against a world of uncertainties and expectations.

 _Stop crying_ , he whispers. Four beats, then just two. She jolts upwards, alone, and he’s a shadow just beyond and the barn is set ablaze and the torch is in his hand and the flames lick at his feet, lick towards her, hungry, hungry. _They told you there was nothing in the dark, but they were lying_.

Hands crawl out from under the cot, teeming, writhing with shadows.

She glances at him, burning, a scream caught in her throat.

 _Got you_ , he says, eyes wet in the firelight. _Gotyougotyougotyougotyou_ —

In the dead of night, Graham startles awake.

—

He lingers in the library, shelves that go on forever towering above him like a city. _Gallifrey_ , he searches, combing through books about alien civilizations, tourism guides, archeological digests, shuffling around in his bathrobe and slippers. Nothing. _Time Lords_ , _Doctor_ , _Kasterborous_. More books, more guides, more indexes, and all of it—a big load of nothing.

“All this literature,” he complains, hands on his hips, glaring up into ceilings that ache with height and grandness and knowledge, “and not a thing? Really? I have met the Doc a time or two, and she don’t half mind the odd bit of praise.” He’d have thought, if she were in any books, any stories, any great songs, like she sometimes alludes to, that they’d be kept here. Preserved. Instead, there’s nothing. Like she’s purged it all from every record. Like she’d rather be a ghost.

He sticks the absence of it all into the jigsaw at the back of his head and rolls up his pyjama trousers, lets his feet dip in the library pool. Whatever’s eating at her, it’s not whatever’s obvious. He knows that much. By now, he’s all but certain of it. And maybe it’s not for him to wonder, but those cramped little smiles hurt to look at, and he loves her like a grandchild, and he’d worry the same for any one of them.

He’d do the same, for any one of them.

Quiet like a ghost, she slips in behind him. Waits a moment, kicks off her shoes. Dangles her feet in beside him with a quiet splash.

“Hey, Doc,” he says. Unnerved, maybe, because the half-thought has surfaced that she’s watching them, tracking them, keeping an eye on what they look for, what they see. But that’s ridiculous, he thinks next, catching a glimpse of her face in the library’s dim light. Far away and far from him. He knows that she wanders, sometimes, late at night. More likely, the TARDIS had just lead her here, changed the corridors round until she ran into a friend.

“Hey,” she says, eventually.

“It’s late,” he ventures. “Everything alright?”

At that, her head raises. She looks to him inscrutably, eyes dark. Hair squashed to one side, like she’s been sleeping on it. “It is late,” she agrees. “Sort of. Relative time, after all. Why are you awake?”

He’s not interested in lies, today. “Bad dreams,” he offers, and she stiffens, beside him.

A beat. Reluctance, hissing into the air like a gas.

“About what?” she whispers.

He moves his feet through the water, watching the reflection of the lights dance, yellow, warm. Very silly, a giant pool next to all these books, he thinks absently. “Red grass,” he says. “I think. Same as it’s been, lately. And the sort of dark you can’t escape. The sort what lives under your bed when you’re a kid. Thing is, though,” he mentions casually, watching her. Still like she never is, stringy hair half-concealing the curve of her face. “I’ve never been afraid of the dark in my life.”

“Nothing there in the dark that isn’t there in the light,” she says softly.

“Is that meant to be comforting?” He frowns slightly. “Anyway, been having them a while, now. Nothing to worry about, I don’t usually remember them that well. Only tonight I woke up feeling like the world had ended,” he says, unsettled, and her face goes so white he worries that she might topple over into the water. “Doc—?”

Her mouth twitches, and for a moment he’s oddly sure that the next thing to exit her mouth will be an apology. Instead, she clamps her lips shut like she might be sick.

“You’ll let me know,” she gets out, around the grind of her teeth. “If they keep happening, yeah?” She swallows painfully. “There are—sleeping aids, if you’d like. Just have to ask, the TARDIS will sort out the dosage for you.”

“No, no, that’s alright,” he says, unease queasy in his gut. Quiet alarm settled neat behind his teeth. “Doc—”

Her mouth twitches again, fingertips white against the tile. Like a hare about to bolt.

“Are you afraid of the dark?” he asks, surprising her. Her feet kick at the water, waves lapping at them absently in retribution.

“It never lasts,” she says, a perfect non-answer. “Darkness. It doesn’t sustain.”

“No, I know,” he says, feeling oddly intent. “I know that. Don’t mean you can’t be afraid of it, in the meantime.” He makes more waves with his feet, gentle currents sucking at their ankles. “Don’t mean you have to stay in it, alone.”

She smiles, but it hangs bitter off her face. Thin and tired.

“Graham,” she says, solemn, odd. The back of his neck chills. “You’ve been looking, haven’t you.”

“Well, maybe a bit,” he admits. “Doc. Your planet. I can’t find it anywhere.”

The smile breaks into pieces.

“Me neither,” she says, and laughs and laughs until the sound chokes off into a ragged breath. She clamps fingers down her face, over her mouth, shaking. “Or I wish I couldn’t. Graham,” she swallows, teary. “You shouldn’t have looked. I wish you hadn’t.”

“I’m just trying to help,” he says. “I’m just trying to understand, Doc. Your planet—the dreams—that boy I keep seeing, he—”

“Don’t worry about the dreams,” she tells him, firmly, between shallow breaths. “They won’t happen again.”

“I’m not worried about them, I’m worried about you,” he says, unease crawling up his spine. “We all are.”

She shakes her head, feet still dangling in the water, bloodless.

“You don’t have to,” she whispers. “I wish you wouldn’t. I just need—” Her throat bobs. “I just need time,” she says, fingers still white against the tile. “Darkness never sustains. I just—I need to—I need—”

She looks to him, plaintive.

And it’s not like her at all, but he can’t help himself, he extends his hands, he offers his arms. A hug is all he can offer, really, there’s nothing he can _do_ —

Her eyes are dark and glassy. Red with exhaustion round the edges, and so strangely, mutinously furious. He shivers, even as she embraces him stiffly, still holding herself back from melting into his arms. Her chin juts sharply into his shoulder. She smells like ozone and sweat. Chlorine, from the pool.

“Doc,” he says, voice cracking. There’s nothing he can do. He still barely understands. But when she pulls away, there’s a strange look in her eye. The turn of her mouth is so lonely it makes his gut ache with nausea. “What are you—”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, a hand reaching up. “I wish you hadn’t looked.”

He feels her fingers, cold on his forehead—

—

There's nothing wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> queen of writing barely coherent one shots immediately after dramatic episodes and then forgetting about them for weeks
> 
> hmm, 'nothing in the dark that isn't there in the light' is something mama used to tell me when I was younger, but it's grown less comforting the older i get lmao
> 
> anyway idk about this one, but it sure Is. Something. I like things to fit into canon bc I'm Like That but i'm also desperate for 13 to get a proper hug and let me tell you shit like this is Not Helping, but at least I can inflict it on others too I guess?? anyway she's messy and slightly upsetting (and also the fam are so persistent that clearly this particular upsetting coping mechanism doesn't work for long) but YEET i hope you enjoyed anyway and I'd love to know what you thought!


End file.
